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Explaining Backlash to Trans and Non-Binary Genders in the Context of UK Gender Recognition Act Reform

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Explaining Backlash to Trans and Non-Binary Genders in the Context of UK Gender Recognition Act Reform Explaining backlash to trans and non-binary genders in the context of UK Gender Recognition Act reform Luke Armitage Abstract: This paper analyses responses to the 2018 Gender Recognition Act reform consultation in the UK, exploring reasons behind the widespread anti-trans sentiment in this context. It compares the conservative Christian roots of traditional opposition to LGBT+ rights, which is still the major source of anti-trans politics in the US, with the rise in prominence of a specific feminist opposition to trans rights in the last few years in the UK. It then explores why the beliefs of relatively small groups have had such a compelling influence on a wider audience in the general population. It argues that the gendered socialisation we all experience through education, media, and political institutions creates a baseline belief in gender determinism and oppositional sexism, and as many people’s main source of information about trans people is the recent surge in related media, a trans moral panic propagated through mainstream and social media easily creates misinformed beliefs about trans issues. A major conclusion of this paper is that trans people have been constructed in the public imagination predominantly in terms of threat- threat to investment in gendered norms, threat to one’s own gender identity, and for marginalised groups including women and also other LGBT+ people, threat to their own in-group resources and desires for assimilation into mainstream culture. Anti-trans sentiment is therefore not only about ideology, but also has important emotional components that should not be overlooked when considering ways to tackle transphobia. Key words: trans, non-binary, Gender Recognition Act, moral panic, backlash, transnormativity Introduction: The Gender Recognition Act (GRA) The Gender Recognition Act (2004) is the law governing change of legal gender in the UK. Individuals can use the process it sets out to apply for a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC), which allows the issue of a new birth certificate in their preferred (binary) gender, a change of gender marker with HMRC, and gives the holder some legal protection against disclosure of their assigned gender and trans status. Whilst most aspects of social transition, including changing the gender marker on driving licences and passports, can be accessed through self-definition or a letter from a sin- gle medical professional, a GRC is the only way to change your legal gender. This legal gender change is required for a trans person to get married in their preferred gender, and for those old enough to not be affected by the future equalisation of pension ages, to collect their pension at the age relevant to their preferred gender. To be awarded a GRC, an individual must apply to the Gender Recognition Panel with two years’ worth of evidence that they have been living in their preferred gender, including multiple medical reports. This process has been criticised as too lengthy, INSEP Special Issue 2020, pp. 11–35 https://doi.org/10.3224/insep.si2020.02 Special Issue 2020.indd 11 02.09.20 10:03 12 Journal of the International Network for Sexual Ethics and Politics, Special Issue 2020 expensive, and medicalised (Sharpe, 2007; Stonewall, 2018). Thus, the UK Govern- ment held a consultation regarding potential reform to this act, from July to October 2018 (Government Equalities Office, 2018). Many trans groups and campaigners called for the act to be replaced by a self-declaration system that includes the option of non-binary genders. During and after this consultation, there was a significant backlash to trans and non-binary people, with hostility constantly expressed in traditional and social media (Cliff, 2019). Forms this took included the incitement of fear around trans women using women’s facilities (e.g. Kerr, 2017; Turner, 2018), as well as main- stream newspaper opinion pieces explicitly denying the validity of trans identities and instead claiming trans people to be predators and/or mentally ill (e.g. McKinstry, 2018). One anti-trans social media campaign successfully convinced the Big Lottery Fund to review their grant to the charity Mermaids, which supports trans children (Persio, 2018); as the claims against Mermaids were found to be baseless, the fund- ing was ultimately upheld (Persio, 2019). The anti-trans media commentary was so pervasive that it was cited as a contributing factor to the demotion of the UK from first (in 2014) to fourth place (2018) in the Rainbow Index, a ranking of LGBTI equality in European countries (International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and In- tersex Association- Europe, 2018). The backlash also included a concerted effort by campaigning groups to encourage people to submit anti-reform responses to the con- sultation, as well as responses that advocated revoking some existing rights of trans people (Fair Play for Women, n.d.; Woman’s Place UK, n.d.). It is important to note that contrary to claims by these campaigners against GRA reform, in other coun- tries where the process for legal gender change is self-declaration, such as Ireland, this has not caused issues such as increased sexual assault in (women’s) bathrooms (Duffy, 2017). This article aims to explore the origins and motivations behind this backlash. It compares what could be considered ‘traditional’ opposition to trans and wider LGBT+ rights from conservatives and religious groups, with the specific anti-trans sentiment from some feminists that has been particularly prominent in this context in the UK. It then discusses why these ideas that may seem to originate in relatively small groups of people have apparently had such a large influence on the general public. It looks at the ways in which trans identities and people have been positioned as threat, including threat to gendered norms, threat to one’s own gender identity, and threat to the rights and potential mainstream assimilation of other marginalised groups. Special Issue 2020.indd 12 02.09.20 10:03 Luke Armitage: Explaining backlash to trans and non-binary genders in the context … 13 ‘Traditional’ opponents of trans rights Religion and ‘gender ideology’ To begin to set the scene of the current debate, it is worth outlining the influence of religion, and Christianity in particular, in opposition to LGBT+ rights and the origin of this in the construction of the gendered social and family roles on which much of Western society has historically been based (e.g. Elshtain, 1993). Whilst Chris- tianity does not inherently necessitate inequality, certain interpretations of it have been instrumentalised by people in power to justify oppressive laws. This is perhaps exemplified by the weight and credibility given to religious opposition to LGBT+ rights campaigns, such as claims that allowing same-sex marriage would undermine or threaten ‘traditional’ (heterosexual) marriage (Busch, 2011; McLean, 2017). This Christian perspective considers dichotomous gender roles- as determined irrefutably by assigned sex- to be dictated by God as truth, and thus movements which advocate gender equality and freedom are deemed a ‘gender ideology’ which aims to intentionally deny reality and go against God (Butler, 2019). This ideology is thought to threaten values considered ‘natural’ by the Church, including the hier- archical gender binary (ibid). The term ‘gender ideology’ appears to have originated in right-wing Catholic groups that oppose the use of the word ‘gender’ in governmental documents and policies, beginning with the first use in an inter-governmental negotiation document at the 1994 Cairo International Conference on Population and Development (Corrêa, 2017). These anti-gender groups instead favour use of only ‘sex’ as the important and apparently natural and binary distinction between men and women, which forms the basis of the traditional family and its associated values. Although originally as- sociated with Catholicism, anti-gender campaigns are supported by various other religious and secular groups, with the latter connected to these ideas through a belief that non-normative families and queer identities contradict the Darwinian laws of nature, rather than divine law (ibid). Thus, opposition to trans rights in many places, especially the US, has come to be primarily associated with the Christian right (Anderson, 2014; Stone, 2018). Oth- er countries where anti-gender and associated anti-trans ideas are prominent include parts of Latin America such as Brazil, as well as parts of Europe, particularly but not exclusively in primarily Catholic places such as Italy, Spain, and Poland (Corrêa, 2017). In contrast, this article will go on to explore why this does not seem to be the case in the current UK context, where there is strongly mainstream anti-trans sentiment, especially from some feminist groups whose other ideas would seem to completely contradict the conservative hierarchical sex roles advocated by anti-gen- der groups. I will first delineate the gendered social context, indeed influenced by our religious history, that we all continue to be socialised into through our educational, political, and media institutions. This will demonstrate how the societal reification of gender determinism creates a baseline position in the general public that predisposes them to see trans people as unintelligible and unnatural. Special Issue 2020.indd 13 02.09.20 10:03 14 Journal of the International Network for Sexual Ethics and Politics, Special Issue 2020 Gendered socialisation and the reification of gender determinism To establish this gendered social context, I will bring together the work of several gender theorists in order to give an account of the process through which transphobia ultimately arises from the same social structures that naturalise misogyny and homo- phobia. Firstly, the concept of hegemonic masculinity (Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005) holds that the socially privileged gender performance is an idealised type of masculinity that sits at the top of a gender hierarchy, and is placed in opposition to femininity. I will subsequently refer to this as classical masculinity.
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